Stephan Rafin has recently released a new XBMC image for Freescale i.MX6 based Wandboard development boards (dual and quad only) and Utilite computers. The images have been built with Yocto 1.5 (Dora) released last month, and are based on XBMC Gotham Alpha 9, the latest alpha before feature freezes. That means this is not a stable image just yet, but features won’t change, and this version of XBMC is now going though bug fixes.
Stephan’s XBMC image includes the following:
- iMX6 hw accelerated decoding (VPU) for most standard formats
- iMX CEC support (for utilite only as wandboards are not properly wired)
- WIFI configuration thanks to network manager addon
- Support for HDMI/SPDIF/Analog sound outputs (including pass-through for HDMI and SPDIF)
- SMB/NFS/uPNP network shares and other standard XBMC features
- Bug fixes against previous version – No more transient black screens, trick modes (ffwd, frwd, ..) are now working, and smoother video playback.
This version also provides better support for developers with improvement for native compilation (gcc and standard dev libraries already installed), and cross compilation (Full SDK provided for x68_64 Linux host), as well as an easier way to completely rebuild the Yocto distro (See original blog post for details).
If you want to give it a try, you can download the images corresponding to your board or device:
- Wandboard Quad
- Wandboard Dual
- Utilite (Test on Utilite Pro only)
To install the image simply uncompress the image, and use dd (Linux) or Win32DiskImager (Windows) to copy the binary to a microSD card. Insert the microSD card into your device, and power it up to start XBMC automatically.
If you’ve got another i.MX6 Quad device such as GK802, you may want to try to use the rootfs with your own bootloader and kernel, or easier use mkxbmc.sh script written by HSTE that will generate an XBMC image automatically for GK802.
Another news for XBMC on ARM platform, for this time for XBMC for Android, is that Geniatech has released the source code for the XBMC app used on its AMLogic AML8726-M? based Android media players.
The zip file contains the modified source for XBMC Frodo 12.2, and it has been checked by dual_HD who reported the following changes against PIVOS release on XBMC forums:
- Save settings after exit, as the earlier version can not save setting after exit sometimes.
- Easier to exit than earlier version
- RMVB format support
- Long time playing 1080p smoothly
That’s not too many changes, but this is still a step in the right direction, as AFAIK, it is the first time Geniatech releases modified source code for XBMC.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
